Flashbacks
Flashbacks (also called analepsis) are a common literary technique in which the current events are interrupted to recreate an incident of an event of earlier occurrence. This device is often used to provide additional information about characters and story as well as an insight into a character’s motivation and background relevant to the events that are currently being unfolded in the story. Flashback devices are commonly used to depict events that have happened before the primary sequence of events in the overall story arc. In Person of Interest, flashbacks are used for different purposes. They can either depict a specific character’s memory or a series of events which happened in the past and are now crucial to current events. So far, every main character has had a flashback whereas only a few minor characters have had flashbacks: Elias, Nathan, Root, Kara and Alicia. Presentation Usually a flashback is introduced by a timeline that takes the audience back to a specific point in the past. Most episodes with flashbacks have two to four flashback sequences where at least one flashback is accompanied by a timeline. Some of the flashbacks that present relevant background information are presented from the Machine's point of view. In these flashbacks, coloured squares are applied to the characters. Examples: * The Machine recorded the phone call Jessica made to her mother. * The Machine accessed NCS Archival Database and retrieved footage of Reese and Stanton on several missions in places including Hungary , New York , Morocco , Ordos , Prague , and Paris . *The Machine read feeds from Iraq and found Carter in a military camp. If the flashback is a character’s memory, it usually revolves around that character only and is mainly told from that character's point of view. If the flashback features background information that is relevant to current events, characters other than the main character can appear and the flashback is told from a neutral point of view. Examples: *Nathan and Alicia meeting in the bar and discuss shipping the Machine. *Nathan creating the Contingency. Reese's flashbacks Reese's flashbacks are mostly personal memories in combination with scenes that occurred earlier in time but relate to a current event. Reese's flashbacks are presented in many ways and supported by a different colour scheme. Flashbacks involving Jessica and other personal experiences are mostly in warmer tones whereas flashbacks revolving around his work with the CIA are usually presented in cold, blue tones. Finch's flashbacks Finch's flashbacks in the first season are mainly providing additional information about the creation of the Machine. In the first season, no personal memories were depicted. The flashbacks are exclusively in cooler blue tones and always introduced by a timeline. Finch's flashbacks in the second season revolve more around personal memories back to when he started to work on the Machine and his history with Grace. The color scheme also changes from slate blue in scenes where he works with the Machine to warmer tones in those scenes where he spends personal time with Grace. Exceptions Most of the flashbacks take place several years before the current timeline. In No Good Deed, Firewall, and Dead Reckoning, a different type of flashback is used. In these episodes, the flashback reverts to an event at an earlier point of time in the same episode. For example, in Firewall, there is a flashback to May 15, 2012. The main events in the episode begin on May 17th. Trivia *In Season 1, Reese has 6 flashbacks, Finch has 3, and Carter and Elias each have one. *In Season 2, Reese has had 1 flashback, Finch has had 4, and Root, Kara Stanton, and Nathan Ingram have each had one (Ingram shared his with Finch) *Many Happy Returns is the episode with the most flashback sequences: 9, and also the only episode that has a flashback inside a flashback (Flashback about Jessica calling Reese in 2010 while Reese is in a flashback in Peter's house in 2011) *The use of flashbacks as a literary device was utilized in The Passion of The Christ which starred Jim Caviezel (Reese) as Jesus. List of Flashbacks Season 1 Season 2 {| class="wikitable" !! style="background:#698e71;"|Image !! style="background:#698e71;" width="150"|Episode !! style="background:#698e71;" width="95"|Character(s)!! style="background:#698e71;" width="375"|Year/Date |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| January 1, 2002 |- |colspan="6"|On the first day of the Machine, Finch begins work with it, starting by asking it if it can see and identify him. The Machine recognizes him as Admin. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| February 16, 2002 |- |colspan="6"|On the 47th day of the Machine, Finch is testing its capability to track people by playing hide and seek. He asks the Machine to respond to his questions by sending a message to his phone. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| September 6, 2003 |- |colspan="6"|Finch also tests the Machine's ability to evaluate and assess risks by playing cards in a casino. Again, the Machine communicates with him by buzzing his phone. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| September 7, 2003 |- |colspan="6"|When Finch leaves the casino, The Machine protects him from being run over by a car. He tells it not to watch out for him alone but rather to protect everybody. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Root||align="center"| April 15, 1991 |- |colspan="6"|Sam and her friend Hanna are playing computer games in the library in their hometown Bishop, TX but Hanna always loses. When the library closes, Sam sees her friend getting into a car, thus making her a witness to Hanna's disappearance. Unbeknownst to Hanna, Sam successfully finishes the game just after she leaves and enters Root as her username. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || ||align="center"| 1993 |- |colspan="6"|After being framed by Root in revenge for killing her friend Hanna, Trent Russell is attacked and shot to death by the drug dealers who thought that he had stolen their money. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| May 8, 2004 |- |colspan="6"|Finch and Nathan are walking in the park. Nathan is unhappy about their relationship and asks about their little project. Finch explains that he had taught the Machine to understand people and find connections between them when it detects an anomaly and points Finch to a woman named Grace, who is painting at the railing. Finch assumes that it's a bug because there seems to be no reason for the Machine to select her. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| 2005 |- |colspan="6"|Finch tests the Machine's ability to find connections between random people when it shows him information about Grace, the painter. Finch suspects that the bug still exists when he learns that she likes Charles Dickens and that there is also not a single anomaly in her life, which makes her different from other people. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| January, 2006 |- |colspan="6"|Finch is buying an ice cream cone when the Machine tells him that Grace is painting in the park again. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| 2006 |- Insert formula here |colspan="6"|On Grace's birthday, she receives a letter from a bike messenger informing her that Finch has created for her a birthday scavenger hunt. She tours around the city, eventually ending up at the Guggenheim museum, where Finch is waiting for her. Together, they our the museum, and Finch begins to tell her something that he thinks she needs to know, but she stops him. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| 2006 |- |colspan="6"|Finch meets Nathan for dinner, where Nathan deduces that Finch is seeing someone. He tells Finch that a little mystery goes a long way and th'at he has just ret'urned from his friend's wedding, during which he saw his ex-wife Olivia. Nathan explains that he's told her so many lies over the years that he doesn't even remember what happened any more. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || John Reese||align="center"| 2007 |- |colspan="6"|In Prague, Reese and Kara enter a hotel room where three men are concluding a deal involving combat drones. Reese and Kara pose as hotel guests, then Reese kills two men and ara kills the other. Reese is visibly nervous and Kara has to calm him, expaining that the people that they killed were enemy combatants and that killing people is in fact their job. And in order for Reese to be good at his job, he'd have to learn to love it. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || John Reese||align="center"| April, 2009 |- |colspan="6"|In Paris, Reese and Kara sit at a bar discussing the next group of people they are supposed to kill. Reese questions the fact that the people are bad, and Kara says that orders are rders. She tells him that he needs to decide whether he's cut out for his job or not, to which John replies that he loves his job. The partners kiss afterward. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || John Reese||align="center"| May, 2010 |- |colspan="6"|Reese has just received orders from Snow to "retire" Agent Stanton afer their mission in Ordos. As he leaves the room, Stanton notices a worried look on Reese's face and tells him to shut it down, because she "needs the killer", not the Boy Scout. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Kara Stanton||align="center"| 2010 |- |colspan="6"|When Kara and Reese find out they have been double crossed during their mission at Ordos, they run for their lives. Kara survives and regains consciousness some time later, finding several men holding her at gunpoint. She is then takento hospital in Dongsheng, where she is greeted by a man who had been following her CIA activities and knows almost everything about her. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |- |rowspan="2"| || || Kara Stanton||align="center"| 2011 |- |colspan="6"|Using the tale of the mythical Titans as an analogy, Greer offers Kara answers about why the goverment wanted her dead. He then tells her that if she will assist him in dispersing a virus, he will tell her who sold the Laptop that Reese and Kara were sent to Ordos to destroy, the man responsible for all that happened to her. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| September 11, 2001 |- |colspan="6"|Finch is working at IFT Plaza when Nathan Ingram turns on the TV. They listen as the news covers the events of 9/11. They say that they started IFT to change the world, and they grew wealthier and wealthier, but failed to meet their goal. 9/11, however, changed the world. They say that they need to change the world before someone else does. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Finch||align="center"| 2009 |- |colspan="6"|Nathan tells Finch that The Machine was their chance and expresses disappointment n inch's giving it away. Nathan asks Finch what would happen if they built a backdoor into the machine, but Finch wants to hear nothing of it. He tells Nathan that they either move on to their next venture together, or they don't. Nathan then walks out the door without saying a word. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Nathan Ingram||align="center"| 2009 |- |colspan="6"|Nathan holds up the social security number and a photo of a woman and is watching her from his car. When she leaves her house, Nathan sees a man following her and pulls out a gun, preparing to intervene. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Lionel Fusco||align="center"| 2011 |- |colspan="6"|Fusco is dragging Detective Stills's body and attempting to bury it. He begins to cry and places Stils's body down in the grave. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Lionel Fusco||align="center"| 2004 |- |colspan="6"|Fusco sits at a bar and asks the bartender for another drink. His partner, Detective Stills tells him h's had enough and should go home. Fusco tells Stills that he can't go home because his wife has kicked him out of the house. Stills asks Fusco to stay the night at his house. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Lionel Fusco||align="center"| January 17, 2004 |- |colspan="6"|Fusco knocks on a door and Stills opens it. He lets Fusco in and Fusco sees that Stills and Azarello have killed a man in what they claim is self defense. They ask Fusco to cover for them, and they guilt him into doing so. |- |rowspan="2"| || || Lionel Fusco||align="center"| March 25, 2005 |- |colspan="6"|Fusco enters an appartment where Stills and Azarello have killed several people. Once again, they ask Fusco to cover for them and he refuses this time. A man jumps out of an armoire, and Fusco shoots him in self defense. He is forced to cover for his partners as a result. |- |colspan="6" bgcolor="#698e71"| |-} Category:Storyline Category:Literary Techniques Category:Lists